Forum in LA Friday 7/22 - Stop LAPD Terror!

International Action Center Forum

Justice for family
of Suzie and Jose Pena

Date/Time: Friday, July 22nd, 7:30 pm
Where: IAC office - 5274 W. Pico Blvd. Rm. 203, Los Angeles
Contact: (323) 936-7266

Featured Speakers:
Arturo Ybarra - Pres. Watts Century Latino Organization
Leonor Lizardo - Senior Program Director, Watts Century Latino Organization

The International Action Center will be holding a forum on police brutality highlighting the most recent tragic shooting in Watts of 19-month-old Suzie Pena and her father Jose Pena.

Arturo Ybarra, president of the Watts Century Latino Organization and Senior Program Director Leonor Lizardo represent one of the main organizations pulling together financial and political support for the family and will be featured speakers at the Friday forum.

Please come help support the family and the movement to stop police brutality here in Los Angeles. We will be discussing ways of building the broader unity necessary to protect ourselves and communities from this ongoing terror by Los Angeles police and sheriffs.


Following is a statement by the IAC on the police killing:

At last week's funeral for 19-month-old Suzie Pena one person summed up the feelings of many who attended when he shouted in Spanish "the police are assassins."

Suzie and her father Jose Pena were both shot July 10th in Watts when Mr. Pena exchanged gun fire with LA's SWAT police while holding his daughter in his arms. Instead of calming the situation down until clearer heads could prevail the police, in response to a fellow officer getting hit in the shoulder, decided that neither his nor his 19-month-old daughter's lives were worth a little more time and negotiation - which the family pleaded for - and decided to storm a desperate man holding a baby and a gun.

However, after trying to hide the coroner's report, the fact was that the bullet that killed Suzie was from the SWAT team. After firing 90 rounds into the Pena's it was no surprise and even Chief Bratton assumed the child was killed by the LAPD. He, however, put all the blame on the father calling him a "cold-blooded killer" even though there has, as of yet, been no evidence found of him killing anyone. Chief William Bratton, on the other hand, has a long record of police brutality and killings under his watch in LA and, before that, as chief of police in New York City. From 1994 to 1996 75 people were killed during his term including the racist murder of Anthony Baez and torture of Haitian-born Abner Louima.

Instead of showing any remorse Bratton went so far as to insult the grieving family, saying they were distorting the truth about the nature of the deceased Mr. Pena.

However, it is not the conduct of the father that Suzie's mother, Ms. Lopez, is focusing on. She has called for justice pointing out the reckless endangerment of life by the LAPD as the real issue here.

Before this shooting incident, when members of the family called the police they simply wanted the police to keep their family, especially the baby, safe from harm. However, the family's wishes including the wish to participate in the negotiations with Mr. Pena were not considered by the LAPD SWAT division. After one officer was hit in the shoulder with Pena's bullet, instead of using their option to retreat to a safer location they decided to even the score, and then some.

This shooting comes almost exactly 2 months after the LA County Sheriffs franticly shot 120 bullets into a vehicle in a residential neighborhood in Compton at an unarmed man simply because he wouldn't stop and was leading them in a 35 mph chase around the block. Numerous stray police bullets were sprayed into nearby houses.

The fact is that this type of reckless racist policing witnessed by this most recent incident and many others prior, including Devin Brown's murder by police, are not the type experienced in more affluent neighborhoods with much fewer Black and Latino people. Beverly Hills doesn't witness this type of military-occupation style policing.

So far, the newly-elected Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has refused to put the blame squarely on the police and has simply asked that the police chief and the family tone down their remarks. This is not acceptable and does not reflect the broad Latino, Black and workingclass support he received to win the election.

Given the increasing record of police brutality and killings in South Los Angeles the immediate, loud and militant demands for justice that can be witnessed in demonstrations organized by the family at the site of the killing seems a much more appropriate response than what the mayor is calling for.

In addition, Chief Bratton should not just be censured for his insensitivity, he should be fired and jailed for being an accomplice to the numerous killings of Black and Latino people by police under his watch.

As this and so many other incidents of police terror prove, we cannot rely on politicians or government officials to protect us. What's needed is a united movement of all social-justice, anti-racist, anti-war activists, labor unionists and all people who will not sit by while their sisters and brothers fall victim to Iraq-style invasions by police in the Black and Latino communities.

Ms. Lopez and her surviving daughter should not have to shoulder this burden alone. We all need to come out and show our support and willingness to understand that these attacks are netiher isolated nor disconnected from all of the struggles for social justice, union rights, against the war and poverty that we fight on a daily basis. Unity is the solution.
http://www.iacenterla.org